Eric Arnow has his own web site now. For years I've been putting his
letters from Asia here. From now on they'll go on his site, the
Bumble Buddhist which
also now has all the previous ones from cuke and photos more. - dc

Date: Fri, Sept. 16Subject: Zen and Vipassana

Hello everyone:

Having just finished two ten day courses at a
Goenka retreat center in Thailand, I had some thoughts to share. It is
interesting how, after years of practice, memories of the past resonate.

Maybe the Buddha was right about building up
merit, or maybe just karma or whatever, but I was transported back to my
days at the Zen Center and Tassajara.

Having been in Thailand for over a year now, I
have been exposed to several different schools of Vipassana practice, and
of course have also practiced Zen.

One of the biggest questions is whether there is a
difference between Mahayana Zen and Theravada Buddhism. While there are
differences, I think there are also many similarities.

One thing for sure though for me is that my having
taken time to concentrate on practice has helped alot. One can ask why I
didn't just go back to a monastery, like Tassajara, and then things get a
little more complicated. Basically, it's easier for me to practise in
Asia.

In the teaching of Suzuki Roshi, several of his
main ideas came back to me

First, seeing things as they "is"

Second, Nothing Special

Third, No attainment.

At the Goenka retreat, in his video talks, (he
usually doesn't attend the "short" ten day retreats, instead leading 20
day or longer retreats) he often referred to "things as they are, not as
we would like them to be." So there is a great parallel there.

He told a humorous story about a very smart
businessman in Burma who attended a retreat with his teacher, U Ba Khin,
years ago.

At the U Ba Khin Center, which I visited for 8
days, there are individual meditation cells. The basic practice in a
nutshell, is bare attention to one's actual bodily sensation experience.
So this fellow is sitting in the cell, and U Ba Khin pays a visit. So was
the student experiencing anything?

As a Hindu, he had ingrained in his mind visions
of Vishnu or bright lights or whatever. Instead, he was down to his
underclothes because it was so hot and stuffy (and those cells ARE hot and
stuffy!)

Hot? Hot? You call that an experience? What kind
of fool am I to think of that as an "experience"?

"When it's hot, die of heat, when cold, die of
cold"

Nothing special what you see before you is IT.
It's just hot.

In terms of the practice, for the first three
days, the course emphasizes close attention first to the air movement in
nostrils, then to the air passing over the upper lip, then just to the
bare sensation of the upper lip itself.

This method eschews breath counting or use of any
thought form to focus the mind.

In the following days, the practice shifts to
mindfulness of body sensations.

Many of you Zen Center students may remember Dick
Baker's story about the 4th day of Sesshin, where Suzuki Roshi would
"forget": to ring the bell, and leave him and Graham Petchy to suffer for
two or more hours.

Well, in the Goenka course, on the fourth day,
Vipassana Day, he shifts from mindfulness of breathing, Anapanasati, to a
guided tour of the body where the student is coached to start at the top
of the head and and feel whatever sensation occurs, down to the tips of
the toes.

The whole "tour" takes two hours. So there I was,
sitting cross legged for two hours on the fourth day of a retreat that
starts at 4 AM and ends at 9PM.

With my old worn out knees, there really is not
much that can prepare you for that Direct Experience of reality. But at
the end of the session, Goenka makes the remark, "This is Reality" I think
those are the same exact words Richard Baker quoted Suzuki Roshi saying
during his 4th day ordeal.

But it sure brought back memories of those times
past.

Baker Roshi once told me to breathe through my
arms and legs, and in a follow up Dokusan, I told him I gave up because I
couldn't. He got exasperated--and justifiably so. So pass my apology on to
him.

Where the Goenka/ U Ba Khin method differs
dramatically from my Zen Center days, is that he is often starting off the
hour or more long periods (OK to move except for three one hour periods
during the day), with the instructions repeated.

I remember how much I wiggled and writhed in my
sesshins. So there you have it. My attainment--30 years of practice and
painful legs--but I don't wiggle and wriggle anymore--as long as it isn't
more than an hour or so.

I think Soto Zen really misses the boat, though,
by not constantly reiterating the basic instructions, and then providing
Dokusan so little. Suzuki Roshi was right when he said you could waste
years sitting on your black cushion. But without constant reminders, it is
easy to get lost.

One of the other similarities between that
technique and Soto Shikantaza is the active awareness of the body.
Shikantaza, just sitting with wholeheartedness, seems like total body
awareness. As Linchi put it:

"In the lump of red flesh, there is the true man
of no rank, S/he is constantly going in and out through the gates of your
senses.

Those who have not witnessed this, Look, Look!"

In the retreat, Goenka was constantly reminding
the students in the taped instructions, "observe, Just Observe". He also
tells people that that they will start experiencing certain body
sensations, and to observe them with equanimity, which he says is the way
to develop wisdom--Prajna, or in Pali, Panya.

This is a departure from my own experience in Zen
which is much less specific about what one might experience, especially on
a physical basis. Also, there is much more emphasis on attention to body
sensation, advising the student to over look or turn the attention back to
the body. This turned out to be very valuable advice for me.

One other thing that came out of the retreat is
the emphasis on equanimous observation.

I think in Zen there is a struggle between the
Soto "non attainment" side, which can lead to spaced out "dead wood"
sitting, or the Rinzai "attainment" way that tries to punch through to
Kensho. While in later years, I know that the Diamond Sangha warned people
not to fall into that trap, it was an element in years past. And I
remember one student in John Tarrants group talking of "drilling into Mu".

Which is not to say that the bare attention of the
U Ba Khin/Goenka style does not entail more and more detailed and subtle
attention to the physical sensations. The whole point is to become more
sensitive to subtle sensation.

One of the noteworthy phenomena in Thailand is
that there is a fair degree of sectarian rivalry. You can talk with lots
of people who assure you that their method is "really the best" and "just
the way the Buddha taught it"

The Mahasi Sayadaw style, entails the mental
verbal noting of phenomena. The rising and falling of the midsection of
the body during breathing has many strong advocates. One nice thing about
it is that there are long walking periods, so the body can recover from
the 1 hour long sittings. It also instructs the student to identify the
phenomena as they arise with a word, else the mind wanders. Whereas the U
Ba Khin method says just the opposite, go back to focussing on the
physical sensation.

I once asked a monk about this point, saying that
you can't really experience something if you are naming it, since the
thought and the phenomenon are actually two different things.

But the reason as I understand it is that by
naming a particular condition, one kind of stops it from its unconscious
habit pattern. The whole point of practice, whether Theravada or Zen is to
identify the conditions and break their hold on the mind/body.

As Chao Chou says, to "Cut off the Mind Road".
Whatever works, even if the method differs.

My observation is that the absolutely best method
is the one that works--for the individual. But that may take a lot of
experimentation and, unfortunately, floundering.

Well. as my teacher Nelson Foster says, it's a
10,000 year project.

In addition to the Mahasi Sayadaw and Goenka/U Ba
Khin way practiced in Thailand, a very common, popular form of practice is
that of mentally noting "Bhuu" on the in-breath, and "tho", on the out
breath. This while noting the air going into the nasal passage and out
again.

This uses the sensation of air as well as the
mental noting (Bhutto is the pronunciation of Buddha in Thailand) to
concentrate the mind. However, once a student gains some experience in
this, the next step is some form of body scanning similar, I think to that
of the U Ba Khin/Goenka method. In fact, several Vipassana schools use
similar techniques, and Theravada texts like the Visuddhi Magga refer to
the meditation on the 32 part of the body.

While a discussion of how all this relates to Zen
and Koans will have to wait for a later time, I observed that a number of
Koans came up for me especially in the recent retreat.

"Ordinary Mind is the Way"

"The real way is not difficult, just avoid picking
and choosing"

This seems to refer to the pure observation
without evaluation of body /mind phenomena.

And one of my favorites, the True Man of No rank,
mentioned earlier, point towards a confluence of understanding. Only my
opinion, but Nirvana, Satori and Nibbana are probably the same. I will
confirm that point later in this life or in a future incarnation.

In any case, I found the Goenka course quite
useful; however, as it is sometimes said, "There is always something
(wrong)." I wanted to stay for a longer time. I have spent as much as a
month in one temple or another during my stay, kind of like doing solo
sesshin.

Finding the right combination of conditions has
been an issue all along, though, and why I came to Asia in the first
place. Since the Goenka organization discourages anything beyond the 10
day retreats, unless one shows a list of "qualifications", I had decided
to go to stay at U Ba Khin's place in Myanmar. They have similar
tendencies, but I was given permission to do a self retreat for up to 20
days at a time. A very adequate approach. And since I am practicing as a
layperson, not wearing my Zen priest clothes, it might well do.

But since it is in Rangoon which is rather noisy,
when I heard of a forest temple in Myanmar, that uses the same method, I
decided to give that a try. They allow longer stays. My current plan is to
go for three months and see how it goes. That will be from early October
to early January.

I hope that this shop talk is interesting if not
useful.

In closing, I wish all the people of New Orleans
may be free from their difficulties, and likewise, I wish that America and
the world be free of war and calamity, that all beings be liberated from
both internal and external oppression.

"A friend of mine asked me, where has he been,
where is he now. I said he'd been set free, he said he'd just let go,
shares a little joke with the world" - Jefferson Airplane, Bodhisattvas